The dancer and choreographer Lucinda Childs was put in the international spotlight with the premiere ofEinstein on the Beach in 1976 at the Festival d'Avignon, as was the composer Philip Glass.

Both were then confined to the underground experimental scene in New York. It is in particular his solo, " Diagonal dance " in the first act of the opera, which will be indelibly remembered, being arranged as a manifesto of the minimalist dance, which she had just invented.

In perfect symbiosis with the composer's music and Bob Wilson's staging, this dance claims to "explore, to attempt all the possible variations offered by a simple choreographic phrase" until the possibilities are exhausted. Untiringly pacing the stage in an imperturbable diagonal back-and-forth movement, the dancer with her extraordinary stamina modifies her small gestures in minute detail: movement of the hands, arms, neck, head, eyes... The eye always has something to notice, to detect, to observe in this infinity of options, this gestural ostinato of perpetual difference. This track will remain the choreographer 's credo for all future shows.

lucinda childs

Lucinda Childs studied with Bessie Schönberg and Merce Cunningham. Merce Cunningham immersed her very early in the multidisciplinary world of the New York School, in contact with the composer John Cage and the visual artists Jasper Jones, Robert Rauschenberg and Robert Morris. In the 1960s, she took part in the adventure of Post-Modern Dance within the Judson Dance Theater, alongside Steve Paxton, Yvonne Rainer and Trisha Brown, dancing on the roofs of buildings, in the street or in churches. She herself puts on very experimental shows, deliberately turned towards the avant-garde and happening, marked by the seal of John Cage. Everything is questioned: the separations between dancers, choreographer and audience; classical gestures in favour of trivial everyday gestures; the relationship to narrative or even sentimental expression.

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After the initial success ofEinstein on the Beach, Lucinda Childs, who also wrote one of the texts for the libretto, followed Andy de Groat to choreograph all subsequent productions: 1984, 1992, 2012 and 2014. She continued her in-depth work on minimalism and achieved a new success in 1979 with the show Dance, with music by Philip Glass and projections by Sol LeWitt, an absolute reference, repeated many times since. 

The collaboration between Lucinda Childs and Philip Glass is a long story: in November 2020, she will stage and choreograph Akhnaten at the Opéra de Nice, the composer's third portrait opera (1984), under the baton of Leo Warynski, directing the artists by videoconference from New York, in the midst of a health crisis. The show saved in extremis by an online broadcast in the middle of a confinement will be programmed again for the 2021-2022 season.

Guillaume Kosmicki